Episode 145: EMFs and their impact on our childrens health with Nicole Bijlsma

I am joined again this week by building biologist, Nicole Bijlsma. In case you missed last week’s episode, Nicole joined me to chat about creating a healthy low-tox home. You can listen to that episode here.

Nicole is a building biologist based in Australia and the bestselling author of one of my favourite resource books Healthy Home Healthy Family. Nicole is also the founder of the Healthy Home (Building Biology) movement in Australia and CEO of the Australian College of Environmental Studies. 

In this episode, Nicole and I will be chatting about electromagnetic fields (EMFs), where we discuss:

• What EMFs (electromagnetic fields) are and how they impact our children;
• The first thing Nicole looks at in a home when it comes to where beds are positioned in the home;
• How Wi-Fi affects our children; 
• How EMFs alter melatonin production;
• The truth about baby monitors;
• Ways to reduce EMF exposure include:
  • The benefits of texting over phone calls;
  • Turning off Wi-Fi at night via a timer;
• Nicole shares a little more information about her best-selling book Healthy Home Healthy Family.

Episode Links:

• Purchase Nicole's book Healthy Home, Happy Family on Booktopia. 
• Check out Nicole's website here. 
• Learn from Nicole over on Instagram here. 
• Listen to Episode 144: Creating a healthy, low-tox home with Nicole Bijlsma

• Sign up for our FREE Immunity masterclass here.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:54

Welcome to the Natural Super Kids podcast, where you will discover practical strategies to inspire you to boost the health and nutrition of your kids. I'm Jessica Donovan, a qualified naturopath specialising in kids health, and I want to make it as easy as possible for you to raise healthy and happy kids. Let's get into it, hey. Hey, welcome back to the Natural Super Kids podcast, jessica Donovan, here Now. Today we are diving into the terrifying world of EMFs electromagnetic fields and I have Nicole Bilsma back on the podcast to pick her brains about what exactly are EMFs, what impact they're having on our kids' health and the ways that we can reduce our kids' exposure to EMFs, which can sometimes feel impossible. But I was really reassured by this conversation with Nicole and reminded of some of the simple things that I can do within my home environment and encourage my teenage kids to do in terms of their habits with their phones and their devices to reduce those electromagnetic fields that can cause havoc with our health. Now, I talked to Nicole in last week's episode as well on the podcast, so make sure you have a listen to that If you haven't already in that episode. In last week's episode, we dived into chemicals and toxins within the home and how to make your home environment that bit healthier. So Nicole is a building biologist. She really is the healthy home guru here in Australia, I should say. She has an amazing book and is the bestselling author of a book called Healthy Home, healthy Family. I would highly recommend that you get yourself a copy of this book. It really is a great resource and really interesting reading, with lots of research to back up. You know Nicole's findings on making our homes healthier and our kids' environment healthier as well. So Nicole is the CEO of the Australian College of Environmental Studies and has lectured at tertiary institutions for 30 years. She's published peer-reviewed journals and is regularly consulted by the media to discuss mold, electromagnetic fields which, of course, is what we're talking about today and toxic chemicals. Nicole lectures in Australia and abroad about environmental health issues, so she really is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to, you know, emfs that we're talking about today. Let's dive into the conversation. Hello, welcome back to the podcast, nicole. Hi, jess, I'm excited to dive into and a little bit nervous to find out what you've got to say about the topic of EMFs. Can you explain to our listeners what EMFs are and how they impact our health and our children's health?

Speaker 2: 5:21

That's a big topic and very passionate about this as a mother who's tearing a hair out, who you know is. My research was and is on electromagnetic fields. So that's what they are electromagnetic fields. Now, since electrification ie electricity in our homes, we have various fields that exist asa result of that, and most of the time they're not problematic. So you have your electricity coming into the house, it then goes to the meter panel and then it goes through various circuits to various parts of the house and you plug your appliances in and then they work beautiful. So the time when that's going to be an issue, those appliances, the only appliances that tend to create what we call a magnetic field, which is appliances that are put into the power point and create a magnetic field, those that have that draw a lot of current. So that would be mainly your fridge motor. When the fridge goes off and on during the night, if your bed is on the other side of the wall of the fridge, because magnetic fields go through walls, that's when you can get sleep disturbances. So the first thing I look at as a building biologist is where is your bedhead backing up onto, is what's on the other side of the wall? Now, the other one is the oven, electric ovens especially so you don't want a cot or any form of bed to be especially children's bed, on the opposite or the adjacent side of a wall where there's an oven or a fridge. Because of the current which is electrons going through the wiring can create a magnetic field. So the beauty with adults, if you have a master bedroom against a kitchen wall where there's an oven, not such an issue because you're not going to cook and sleep at the same time. But kids who are sleeping during the day when the oven could be on, whose cots are on the opposite wall to the oven, as in adjacent next to that, can be problematic for their sleeping. So the other one, of course, is the meter panel or the smart meter that generates a magnetic field. So they're the ones that I would look at as a building biologist when I'm assessing your home, for EMFs is not having a bed head backing up against a meter panels or smart meter, a fridge, a microwave sorry, an electric oven? And of course the inverter. Inverters are used for solar panels, so they're the big ones that can cause issues. The other one is living within 400 meters of a high voltage transmission line, those big power lines or living within three meters of a power line of a street. So that's an issue. If you live in a city areas near a tram line or a second or third story where you can see the power line of the street literally just outside of your second story window, that can be very problematic for magnetic fields. So they're the sort of things that we don't want in terms of exposure. So fortunately very few people have environments where they're exposed to high magnetic fields. The research on this came out initially in 1979, 1979 by Wirtimer and Leeper that showed living within 400, 500 meters from high voltage transmission lines within the first 15 years of life double the risk of childhood leukemia. So they were the first to show that and since then there have been multiple publications for what we call systematic reviews, which is a summary of the evidence to show, yes, that high voltage transmission lines and especially magnetic fields in excess of three or four milligas are associated with a doubling the incidence of childhood leukemia, but it's rare. So make sure when you look at your bed and the kids bedroom but their bedhead is not backing up on to those things that I mentioned, that will reduce your exposure. The second thing with electromagnetic fields is the radiation emitted from your Wi-Fi enabled devices. And this is the nightmare because it's everywhere. And what we know about the radio, whether it's radio frequencies, this is the radiation emitted from all Wi-Fi enabled devices your cell phones, your iPads, your digital devices that have Wi-Fi connectivity, your cordless mouse, keyboard printers, smart air conditioners, smart watches, your devices that you have on your wrist, your Fitbits. They're all emitting what we call radio frequencies, and the problem with that is that it's in what we call the non-ionizing radiation, so, unlike X-rays and nuclear bombs, which are in the ionizing section of the spectrum, it affects the body differently, but it still causes significant adverse health effects. It just takes a long time. So it's like tobacco smoke. Tobacco smoke took 50 years to get legislated, because the latency period for smoking and lung cancer is quite significant. Same with asbestos it took multiple decades before asbestos was acknowledged as being an adverse health effect, because to show cause and effect is difficult. It was not like being run over by a bus and you're hurting your leg and going oh, it was the bus. It takes a long time. Now the concern is that it's become really clear now in the research that the way radio frequencies impact health is they suppress melatonin. Now, anyone who's got a child on the spectrum or neurodevelopmental disorders is probably on melatonin to help them sleep. Melatonin is one of the most important neuropeptides for sleep, but also for reproductive cycles. When melatonin drops as a child, that's when you enter puberty. That's the key marker is a drop in melatonin. Melatonin is also the most important anti-cancer neuropeptide we have in the body. It's the powerful free radical scavenger. When that drops with age, then you age. There's rapid aging. That's when you get chronic disease manifestation. The interesting thing about what's happened in the last 10 years is that a lot of these kids aren't sleeping and we're giving melatonin to everybody, which is a good thing, I guess, but the quickest way to suppress it is to have your digital devices in bed to have in your bedroom or even in an adjacent room. The Devices that emit the highest level of radiation are your extenders, boosters, routers, cordless phones. They're the worst. Many of the routers that we're testing have the same level of radiation as a mobile phone base station, and what seems to have happened in the last five years is Telstra has built in Multiple antennas in the routers and modems so when people pass your house they have the capacity to connect to your mode of temporarily to maintain signal instead of the mobile phone base station.

Speaker 1: 12:24

So I've done that deliberately.

Speaker 2: 12:26

Well, I mean, it looks like that certainly saves and license, agree, you know agreements etc. For tens of thousands of dollars a year. But the radiation we're getting from these dual band modems is in the millions. I mean in the the latest guidelines by the International guideline for non ionizing radiation, by a panel of 30 researchers. They said you should get a keep it below a hundred microwatts. These routers are in the millions. It's it's hundreds of thousands. I'm not surprised. We're in a pandemic of insomnia because we know radio frequencies affects sleep. So it's really important, if you must. Personally, I think every house needs to be hard-wired. If you've got kids, you need to hardwire the house. You having a modem is not okay Because the modems are designed to emit high levels of radiation throughout your house, your neighbor's house, the neighborhood. Look, you can just look at your finding. Oh, I can see all the modems in my suburb, in my street. Why? Because they're bathing everybody. That's the problem. The closer you are to the source I wear the modem extender, booster, router is, the higher the level radiation it drops off quickly with distance. So to me, if you can't hardwire your house is, you know it costs cost me $1,800 to get a electrician to come in and put hard wire ethernet cable and ports in the kids bedroom and in the living space and of course that's expensive. But to me that's really important because if the kids aren't sleeping then they're moody, they're irritable and has a downstream effect for their health and their academic performance. To me that's a no-brainer.

Speaker 1: 14:09

Yeah, let alone the long-term effects we don't really know about yet right?

Speaker 2: 14:13

Well, because it's your most important anti-cancer hormone. It's accelerating your capacity to deal with cancers. Accelerate, of course we now know brain tumors are associated with cell phone use. It just takes 10 years or more. The latency period for brain tumors is 15 to 25 years. But the argument that the cell phones don't cause cancer they could not even make that call until recently it cause. It takes the like, like asbestos, like these other you know, long-term environmental tobacco smoke. It takes years I suppose 37 years before from exposure to development of the cancer with cell phones. It takes years so but the reality is it's right at our doorstep now Because since 3g was enforced or introduced in the telecommunications network from around early 2000, now you know, 23 years or up to 25 years coming up. Now this is when we start to see the tsunami of brain tumors and we are seeing this in the data. Over the age of 60. The data in Australia has more than almost doubled for over 60 year olds for brain tumors. And they're saying they don't know why. I have two of my best friends diagnosed with brain tumors two months apart this year. One has grade four. Six months she's been given she's 59, the other one's 50. Now, you know, it's really important to keep and it may be due to that, who knows for sure we have. But the fact that we're seeing people below 60 developing these brain tumours and the oncologist, the neurologist, saying I don't know what's going on. We're seeing so many young people in their 20s and their 30s with these types of brain tumours. That's what they said to these two women. We don't know why. And I said well, the latency period is up. You know, we've been seeing this for 15 to 25 years. We're going to see the tsunami and unfortunately it looks like. I mean, in my personal life I know two women with it. What's the chance that that for a rare brain tumour like that?

Speaker 1: 16:19

Not all that rare anymore and I personally like not in my close circle, but I know of in my community, yeah, a couple of people that have passed away like yeah, well, under 60 of brain tumours over the last couple of years. So it's really scary. And also, you know the amount of time we're spending on these devices now, even compared to five years ago has you know, that's what. That's what also really scares me as well, because it's yeah, I'm only going to get worse really, isn't it? It?

Speaker 2: 16:48

is. And look, it's very hard as a parent like I'm a single mum and I spend a lot of time yelling at my kids it's cute, bloody device. I have rules like, okay, you're going to use the device, then the only rule I have is I'm going to have my meter next to you on full volume going and, oh, mum, get that device away from me. I can't hear. I go yes, that's what, that's what your body's dealing with. So the meter's picking up this massive sound from the radiation emitted that she, that we can't hear without ears, but your body is absorbing that. So it's really important, you know, to try and download the app and then go into into why. You know to get off into flight mode to make sure the big devices are said routers, extenders, boosters, cordless phones. If you can't go hard wide, then at least power down the router and the modem by 90%. So when you buy it it's powered to its highest setting, so it's emitting radiation all over your house and your backyard and the neighbors. You can power that down and I talk about that in the book how to go into, look at the number under the router, go into the setting and then reduce it so it's only bathing one or two rooms in your house where you want Wi-Fi connectivity, as opposed to your sleeping areas. Having the phone and any Wi-Fi enabled device in your bedroom is a no go. You need sleep. If you don't get sleep right, this is the issue with a lot of the kids If you don't get the sleep right, they never get better their mental health. Every mental illness you can think of has sleep disturbances as part of its presentation Every one of them. Because if you don't sleep, that's why they use in war sleep deprivation, because you will go nuts and, of course, you accelerate aging and cancer risk because melatonin is critical for that. So you've got to get your sleeping environment right and do that by getting rid of every Wi-Fi enabled device. Not having yourself phones in your room while you're sleeping, having a battery operated clock as your alarm would be up, and not having anything on the other side of your bedhead that is Wi-Fi enabled or draws that current.

Speaker 1: 19:04

Yes, I love it. And what about airplane mode In terms of phones? I know you mentioned that, but say, phones in the bedroom On airplane mode, is that good or is it better out of the like?

Speaker 2: 19:15

I think you're better off charging your phones in a room a couple of rooms away. Personally, I think it's because even in airplane mode, you can still have Wi-Fi connectivity, like the Bluetooth. You can see Wi-Fi and that may or may not be on still, you know. So I think you best have your devices out of the bedroom and then having a battery operated clock instead.

Speaker 1: 19:38

Okay, I'm bringing this up with my teenagers again Because I have a no phone in our bedroom room, like for me and my husband, like we're both on board with that. But somehow my kids have talked me into the fact that I think it was like to listen to their go to sleep, music or whatever, and yeah, they've been putting them on airplane mode. But yeah, I think we need to go that step and get them out of the bedrooms.

Speaker 2: 20:02

Yeah, look, absolutely it's important. It's not easy. I really sympathize for every mother and parent out there because I have challenges with that. I am yet still yelling and I, you know, did a randomized control trial and the impact of a baby monitor on healthy adult sleep and it was statistically significant. It affected healthy adults. I couldn't get ethics approval to put this baby monitor on a cot and test the babies. I bought it from Kmart and I couldn't get ethics approval but I could put it near healthy adults, finding healthy adults at sleep. It was a challenge. I got 12 adults in. My study was four week study and second and fourth week were I put a baby monitor next to their bed head and then on one of the weeks because it was double blind, on one of the weeks it wasn't on, I didn't know, they didn't know. On the other week it was on and it affected their non-ren sleep. It affected 30% of them had clinical insomnia after seven nights of having this monitor next to their head, and this monitor was designed to be used like that.

Speaker 1: 21:07

So what's the deal with baby monitors? Is it the EMFs as well? Massive?

Speaker 2: 21:11

radiation Massive. It's actually because the radiation I'm in it from. I chose that as the unit because the radio frequencies from that are huge. It's similar to a router and of course, what I see at the ground level is that when we're doing audits, you know, assessing homes where there's kids with cots, with baby monitors, they're not sleeping, they're very restless. They end up at the mother baby unit in the hospital. No one's asking questions about EMFs. So I said to my supervisor I want to do a study on this because I'm seeing a lot of sleep deprivation in young kids because of the baby monitor. The study that I've done and written up has been rejected by eight journals who keep my study for six months, knowing I cannot give it to another journal, and then reject it for the most ridiculous reasons. And the three professors are going cold. It's too controversial, no one wants to touch it. The journals some of these are funded by telecommunications. Oh my gosh. So what you see is evidence based and what's really going on out there is very different.

Speaker 1: 22:13

Yeah, wow. So so for parents listening that might be using a baby monitor, any better alternatives, or just so definitely a hard wide monitor is better, not one that's Wi-Fi enabled.

Speaker 2: 22:28

If you must listen or see your children when they're sleeping I mean to me with twins it was like I just got to shut that door after that. I mean feed them. I need an hour sleep between feeds. I'm going to go nuts. It's a CC. Hard wide CC TV is a better option, much better than the book. Again, so hard wide option. If you look, if you've got a child at risk of sins, you need some form of monitoring. I get that, but I think half the time I don't know. I think it's really important. You've got to put your health there as well as the kids. If you're not getting sleep as a parent, you're not good to anybody. It has to be something where you know. I've seen parents that are so hyper vigilant they're walking zombies and put their kid first when in fact they need to put their health first as well. Yes, Compromise, I don't know. You know this vigilance of having to listen to your kid breathe. I don't know. There's something in that I can't do that?

Speaker 1: 23:22

No, I was. I was never a baby monitor user but like we used to live in a very small house when the kids were little so I could hear them pretty easily. So, like for us with teenagers I know you've got teenagers as well, I've got teenagers and you know I mean kids are getting getting mobile phones younger and younger these days Like what are the sort of I don't know like realistic restrictions? I mean I put sort of time limits on my kids phones which they absolutely hate, but you know they just switches off and it's two hours a day, which I still think is way too long. Like what would be your kind of, I guess, tips, like in a practical sense in it, you know, I guess in the modern world, to minimize the impacts of EMS specifically from mobile phones for our kids.

Speaker 2: 24:14

Well, the good news with this? The bad news is this generation is addicted. You know, digital. We've got digital dementia. There's new words in our vocabulary Instagram, facebook, snapchat, digital dementia, no homophobia, fear of being without a phone. Yeah, what's this about the generation? Is they text? They don't tend to call on their phone a lot. So that's true. Texting is great because it keeps it away from a vital organ. You do want to keep it away from your brain, your heart and your testes and your Okay. Well, that is good news. Yes, so if you do that, you can reduce the exposure by 80 or 90%. So that's really good. Don't carry it in your bra or in your waist, knee, your reproductive organs. That's really important. So that's. Those things alone are very, very helpful in reducing the radiation and, of course, not in your bedroom whilst you're sleeping at night. So I forgot to mention. If you've got a router or you're renting and you've got a Wi-Fi boost or router, turn it off at night before you go to bed. And I recommend my clients to get a clock timer so you know when you go on holidays, you can turn the lights on and off automatically with a clock timer. Get one attached to your router so it automatically turns off at a certain time of the night, so you don't have to think about it. And the little bug is, who get onto their phone at night while you're sleeping can't get onto the internet because if the router's not, yes, perfect. So I would recommend clients do that.

Speaker 1: 25:38

Yeah, that's a really good reminder. Actually, I used to turn ours off every night and I've just fallen out of the habit of that, so thank you for that reminder. We do have not the whole house, but we do have some of the house, kind of what did you call it? Hardwired with the. Yeah, but I think I need to get onto putting that through the whole house as well. Okay, so for anyone interested, you know more in these kinds of topics. You know, I know you're the guru of environmental medicine and keeping our homes healthy. Can you tell people a bit more about your book?

Speaker 2: 26:16

Yeah. So Healthy Home, healthy Family was really designed to help me not write reports when I was doing assessment of people's homes. They wanted a lot more detail and I was just like sick of writing reports. I'll give you the book as far as the assessment, but it's really a compilation of a lot of the research I've done over the last 20 years or so in a palatable form, but also enough research to help the partner who's skeptical going. This is ridiculous, why you know there's so much evidence out there and I was shocked by the amount of evidence on electromagnetic fields and chemicals and mold and all that sort of stuff. So it's as you said, it's a reference guide so you can just get to it when you're going. Okay, I want to get you know. I've got a kid with Axema. How do I deal with that? Cleaning products or fabric softener, all that sort of stuff to help them navigate that. So a lot of data there. A lot on my website too, buildingbiologycomau, as I mentioned, creating short courses for the public to help them navigate a lot of the misinformation, because once you bring the awareness of EMFs now everyone starts finding shungite crystals and shielding materials that are actually often not doing anything and giving a sense of security. And secondly, often exacerbating various fields electric fields, magnetic fields, radio frequency fields so they're often making it worse. So, really wanting to empower the public, a lot of my time up until now has been spent on running the college creating the only nationally accredited course in EMF testing. So we had that as an option for people who want careers in mold testing, emf testing, building biology. But I think there's a demand to help clients, you know, with these short courses to help them navigate how to reduce their kids' exposure, because in the end, what can be more important than the health of your family?

Speaker 1: 28:09

Yes, I totally agree, which is what we're all about here at Natural Super Kids, and I will say again I know I said this in our previous episode that your book and your website are just amazing sources of information for me as a practitioner, but also, I think, really easy to consume for parents as well. So we'll make sure all of the links of where to find you and your website and everything that you do are in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me again.

Speaker 2: 28:41

Thank you so much for the opportunity, jess.

Speaker 1: 28:50

Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Head on over to our website, naturalsuperkidscom, for the show notes for this episode, as well as a whole heap of inspiration to help you raise healthy and happy kids. I'll see you next week.